This invention relates generally to video display devices and particularly to display devices that display heterogeneous video.
Heterogeneous video is video from disparate sources which is intended to be displayed on a single video display device. The video may be graphics or streaming video normally associated with television programming. The graphics may come, for example, from an associated processor-based system for display on a display device which also receives other video sources. The heterogeneous video may also include video from a playback device such as a video cassette recorder or digital versatile disk player, games, and applications like e-mail, web browsers and word processors.
Conventionally, heterogeneous video is displayed on a single display device by mixing the disparate content within a processor-based system and then coding the disparate content to a single common video output signal for interface to the display. Inevitably, such an output represents an awkward compromise between different ideal representations for each of the sources and limitations imposed by the actual display device.
For example, the simultaneous display of a first video at twenty-four bits per pixel and sixty frames per second with a second video at sixteen bits per pixel and sixty frames per second may require that both videos be converted into a common output format, for example, of twenty-four bits per pixel and sixty frames per second. While this output format may be advantageous for the first video, it amounts to a over representation of the second video which only requires sixteen bits per pixel. This “up-conversion” of the second video source unnecessarily increases the amount of bandwidth required to transport the first source to the display.
The unnecessary additional bandwidth and sub-optimal representation of at least one of more than one video source may result from the practice of adapting heterogeneous video sources to a single format. Thus, there is a need for a way of handling heterogeneous video which does not unnecessarily waste bandwidth or diminish the representation of some (if not all) of the video from various video sources.